The world's climate has been changing ever since the Stone Age. Things just sped up rapidly over the last two centuries due to industrial developments. But from what we usually see in films and other depictions of prehistoric eras, people had gone through some extreme weather conditions and changes as well.
Two researchers, Peter Allen and John Stewart, from Bournemouth University wanted to create a simulation to show how prehistoric humans had to adapt to the different weather patterns and vegetation available to them so they developed a video game and asked people to try it out.
We designed a video game environment and asked volunteers to find red deer in it. The world they explored changed to scrub and grassland as the climate cooled and thick forest as it warmed.
The participants could spot red deer at a greater distance in grassland than in woodland, when the density of vegetation was the same. As vegetation grew thicker they struggled to detect prey at greater distances in both environments, but more so in woodland.
In the world they created, they tried to imitate the conditions which prehistoric humans also went through but in going through the simulation, we see certain patterns that give us insight on how humans adapted to these climate changes.
-via The Next Web
(Image credit: Viktor Vasnetsov/Wikimedia Commons)